By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

A collected volume on the interconnection between language and ethnic identity.

Like the first volume, The Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Volume2 is a reference work on the interconnection between language and ethnicidentity. In this volume, 37 new essays provide a systematic look atdifferent language and ethnic identity efforts, assess their relativesuccesses and failures, and place the cases on a success-failure continuum.The reasons for these failures and successes and the linguistic, social,and political contexts involved are subtle and highly complex. Some ofthese factors have to do with whether the language is considered a dialect,as in the cases of Bavarian, Ebonics, and Scots (considered to be dialectsof German, American English, and British English, respectively). Otherfactors have to do with government policy, as in the cases of Basque andNavajo. Still other factors are historical, such as the way Canaanite wassupplanted in present-day Israel by another classical language-Hebrew.

Although the volume offers considerable sophistication in the treatment oflanguage, ethnicity and identity, it has been written for thenon-specialized reader, whether student or layperson. The contributors arean international group of well-known scholars in a range of fields. Fishmanand Garcia provide a detailed introduction that addresses the difficulty ofassessing the success or failure of a language. They also present aconclusion that integrates the data presented in the volume.